Migrating with children, particularly when you have a blended family or even if you are a single parent can be complex, not only because of all the logistics involved, but because there are very specific legalities tied to the visa process, for you and those children. INZ has a fairly complicated set of rules when it comes the evidence and information required for children, whose parents are divorced, separated, never married or even where one parent is simply not migrating (yes it happens).

Those requirements can become very onerous, if you haven’t worked them out at the start of the process and even if you have, INZ can still make things challenging depending on the country you are coming from and the variety of information that might be available. We deal with this regularly and INZ’s requirements, while logical, in terms of protecting the rights of children and parents, can often be archaic or out of step with how the world operates.

Every few weeks (or even days), another global headline reminds us how unpredictable the world has become. The latest example comes from the U.S., where a tragic shooting involving National Guard members immediately ignited calls for sweeping immigration crackdowns.

This sits alongside already heavy crackdowns on migration across the U.S., including the deployment of ICE raids, raising fees for skilled work visa applicants and an increased focus on slowing down border movements. The U.S. has also recently banned visa applications from various high risk countries.

It was inevitable that AI and tools like ChatGPT or Co-Pilot would start to become the “go to” sources for many people considering a move to another country - after all if you can find out what to make for dinner, with the five things you have left in your fridge, using AI, why couldn’t it also tell you whether or not you might qualify for a visa and then by extension how to get it.

There is also a proliferation of companies now trying to sell the “AI Visa” solution, attempting to give people access to a platform that will tell them if they qualify, what visa they might qualify for and then how to go about applying for that visa - again an inevitable consequence of our sudden need to do everything with AI.

At some point in the last few years (and probably due to the pandemic that we dare not speak the name of), our Government became fixated on giving everything a colour coding system, based on traffic lights. I guess its a pretty familiar concept and if the light is green, its all go, if its amber, exercise caution and if its red forget about it.

The same colour scheme we use to direct traffic or previously used to determine if we could leave the house, has also been adopted in to our immigration system, starting with the “Green List” and soon to be complimented by the “Amber” and “Red” lists to make the complete set.

If you read the headline and wondered if the actual country of New Zealand was getting smaller, I apologise - what I was really referring to was our population growth (or rather lack thereof), which seems to be a bit of a recurring topic amongst mainstream media outlets.

To be fair they are right, in that New Zealand’s population, which was already pretty small to begin with, has been plagued by declining growth and then compounded by the number of Kiwis heading offshore.

A short post this week, as I pack my bags to leave Las Vegas and make the slightly arduous journey back home to New Zealand - and I will admit, I am looking forward to it. Myself and two other colleagues have been in the US as part of the Andersen Global conference, which has been a pretty well organised event. Legal, accounting, tax and other professionals have gathered together over four days at the Bellagio Hotel in the city that literally never sleeps - Las Vegas.

It almost feels wrong to be talking about Christmas and the holiday season already, but with only 55 days left until the big day arrives, there will be plenty of people thinking about travelling this way for the summer (or to escape their winter. For a lot of families in New Zealand, the Christmas holidays are a great opportunity to invite their extended family members here - with most of us taking at least two weeks off, over late December, and through to mid-January.

As I write this, I have a song swirling around in my head, one written and performed by the Rolling Stones…you can probably guess what it might be. When it comes to the visa process, it is often about being able to satisfy an individual immigration officer that the claims you are making are credible and that you meet the requirements for the visa you are applying for.

If you aren’t familiar with it, there is a great show called “MythBusters”, presented by two ex-Hollywood special effects artists, who take viewer submitted myths and put them to the test. The process usually consists of multiple explosions or physical injury and makes for some great entertainment (the injuries are never that bad).

However myths also creep in to the visa process, perpetuated by a myriad of social media commentators, and well-intentioned people who simply have no idea what they are talking about.

For most people considering a move to New Zealand, securing a job offer is an absolutely vital part of that process. Having skilled employment has become the glue that binds the rest of an application together, and while that wasn’t always the case, I don’t see the current need for a job offer, changing any time soon.

It does make sense, because claiming you are skilled is one thing, but proving it, through having a job offer in the country you plan to move to is quite another.

The new SMC changes (coming August 2026) have had some polish added over the last week, as the Government has drip-fed the details out in to the market, and it has caused quite a stir.

Alongside the two new pathways that were announced as the key part of the changes, further updates have been released on how the new points system will work in the next 12 months.

It has been talked about for quite some time, but this week, the New Zealand Government finally announced its biggest change to the Skilled Migrant Category (SMC), since the system was rolled out two years ago in October 2023. But before you start packing your bags and ordering your aisle seat on the next flight over, these changes wont come in to effect until mid-2026.

It’s spring and for some love may be in the air…although for some that love might consist of quite a bit of air, given they could be living in two completely different countries. This time of the year tends to bring about a bit of a surge in potential partnership applications as Kiwis overseas who have found the love of their life in a different country, consider moving back to start the new year in New Zealand.

Timely then, that we present an article dedicated to those folks, the ones looking to bring their significant other to the land of the long white cloud and of course needing to sort out a visa to make sure that significant other is here lawfully.

I posted something on LinkedIn the other day, in relation to the notion that if you are migrating to New Zealand in the pursuit of perfection, you might be a little disappointed. It got some interest, and particularly the part about New Zealand being a bit quirky (as compared to many other countries). It also included a picture of the giant carrot in Ohakune, so that might have added to the engagement a little.

The message however is pretty relevant, because I often get the impression that some of my potential clients, think that New Zealand is paradise and whilst it is a great country, it is not entirely perfect. I tend to encourage these people to think of the move as being a pursuit of something different, but not perfect, because perfection is a pretty high expectation to meet.

I come from migrant stock and my parents (both of whom have passed away), made the big bold move to shift their lives from the Netherlands to New Zealand in the 1950’s. Back then, migrating was a very different exercise - the New Zealand Government was actively seeking out tradespeople from specific countries (we had a very geographically targeted program) and my father attended an interview at the local New Zealand consulate.

Qualifying was more about whether the particular assessing “officer” liked you and if you came from the right country as opposed to meeting specific criteria, points or skills systems. There were very few targeted policies in place and the system was largely discretionary, with a focus on people being settled here to add to our labour pool. Their was a strong focus on migrants from the UK and other European nations and migration from other parts of the world was significantly more controlled.

It’s incredible how quickly we can access information in the current era, and a far cry from my early years in the immigration industry when getting policy updates was a far more ceremonious and drawn out affair (because most of it was handled in paper form). New rules were often a highly guarded secret, prepared behind closed doors, with little to no external input, and announcements generally happened on the day the rules went live.

Once you finally had those rules, getting the message out to clients was equally time consuming - there was no easy means to broadcast updates, and certainly nothing like we have now. Today, within minutes of a policy change, clients are already reading about these changes, being pinged by a dozen social media apps.

The backbone of our residence program is the Skilled Migrant Category (SMC) for short. which is actually several different visa categories all under one umbrella.

As the name suggests, the SMC is all about bringing skilled, employable applicants in to New Zealand and giving them the chance to reside here permanently. However, the key component of this category - your level of skill is not quite as straightforward as it might sound.

Visa applications are complicated…not because they were intended to be that way, but because when you are trying to ensure that you bring the right people in to your country, you need a very well structured set of criteria and rules.

However, I am not sure that they should require a degree in quantum mechanics to decode - and for some applicants, trying to understand some of these rules is a little bit like calculating the trajectory for Rocket Lab’s next launch program.

New Zealand is a nation full of people doing stuff, and usually the stuff they are doing is the source of their livelihoods. Small businesses are the lifeblood of our economy and they are the source of some pretty amazing innovations, particularly in the tech and engineering sectors. New Zealanders are well know for their DIY approach to things (we call it the number eight wire mentality - you can do anything with number 8 wire) and running your business has naturally become an extension of that. Although there is no official description of what a “small business” is, our statistics gurus, tend to use the measure of any business that has less than 20 staff.

If you are a parent, and have children that have reached the stage of being able to vocalise their opinions, you will know how terrifying that first “are we there yet” can be, when you are in the car and on the road. It is terrifying because the first one, is usually followed by an uncannily timed series of the same sentence, on repeat, with gaps just long enough to make you think they might have moved on.